Silicon Valleywood

Pay-What-You-Like Pricing October 1, 2007

Radiohead is going to let fans pay what they want for a digital copy of their upcoming album. My cynical initial take is that Radiohead is in a unique position: they’re a band with a fairly big fan base, they currently don’t have a label contract, and they haven’t released anything since 2003 (so they just might need to do something dramatic). Even if this scheme makes them some money, it’s not an easily replicable recipe.

Kinda like the folks who said that everybody should do the Grateful Dead thing and make all their money off touring. You try touring for a living, pal. It’s damned hard work, and nobody pays you an advance.

The Times aggregates a lot of reactions. Most of them are pretty naive.